A healthcare enterprise has an associated management resource that manages operation of one or more medical devices in the healthcare enterprise. To determine what functionality to enable in a respective medical device, the respective medical device establishes a communication link to communicate in a network environment. Subsequent to establishing the communication link, the medical device initiates communications over the communication link from the medical device to the remotely located management resource. The communications include a unique identifier value assigned to the medical device. Depending upon feedback (such as granting or denial of authorization) from the management resource with respect to the unique identifier value, the medical device operates in one of multiple different operational modes such as a fully functional mode or a reduced functionality mode.